


This is the Way the World Ends

by aghamora



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Angst, F/M, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-06-10 13:56:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6959602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aghamora/pseuds/aghamora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Laurel hates to admit it, but with the bi-monthly murders and cover-ups she takes part in, she’s gotten fairly used to seeing dead bodies. </p><p>She’s also used to those bodies staying dead. This whole zombie reanimation thing is a complication she could do without.”</p><p>Or, Frank, Laurel, and the others face down the zombie apocalypse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Act I

**Author's Note:**

> This is the product of me starting The Walking Dead and apparently wanting to make everyone in the HTGAWM universe suffer even MORE murder. Frank/Laurel-centric overall, but includes a good deal of the other characters too. 
> 
> Begins toward the end of 2x15, before Frank leaves. Contains mild gore and pretty much everything you'd expect in a zombie AU, including minor character death.

Laurel hates to admit it, but with the bi-monthly murders and cover-ups she takes part in, she’s gotten fairly used to seeing dead bodies.

She’s also used to those bodies staying dead. This whole zombie reanimation thing is a complication she could do without.

No one knows how it begins; only that it begins. The first reports trickle in through obscure blogs online and local news channels. Few pay much attention to them, and even if they do, they don’t believe it. It makes sense to Laurel – THE DEAD STARTING TO RISE FROM THEIR GRAVES AND DEVOUR THE LIVING sounds like a headline straight out of one of those shitty B-rated, fake blood-drenched, gratuitous gore-fest zombie flicks her brother always used to love. The first time she hears about it, she sure as hell doesn’t believe, either.

It goes national while they’re all at the office – minus Annalise, who still isn’t back yet from her impromptu trip home – huddled around the television watching the news report about Caleb. It’s the first, and one of the only, emergency television broadcasts, given by a scrawny, grey-haired anchor, shaking, sweaty, terrified, but managing to compose himself long enough to read the words on the paper in front of him.

Laurel can only catch fragments. Dead rising from their graves. Passersby being attacked. Bitten. _Eaten_. Some kind of virus, or parasite, or bacteria. The CDC doesn’t know what it is. The National Guard is being sent in – “for containment purposes.” It’d started in Atlanta. Connor jokes about how far away it is, how it’ll sure as hell never come here. Frank agrees with him. Tells them, as flippantly as he can make it sound, that they ‘don’t got nothing to worry about. Somebody’s probably just hijacking our signal.’

Then they mention Cleveland. New York City. Philadelphia. Cities up and down the East and West Coasts.

The jokes and laughter stop, after that.

 

\--

 

The first time Laurel Castillo sees a walker is that same night.

“Yeah, well, I won’t believe none of it ‘til I see it. For all we know this is just some teenage prank gone too-” Frank is in the middle of telling them in the living room when a bloodcurdling scream just outside the window cuts him off, makes him freeze.

All the blood drains collectively from everyone’s faces. Laurel’s sure she must be white as a ghost.

Michaela is the one to ask the question on everyone’s mind. “W… w-what the hell was that?”

Nobody moves, at first. Nobody dares to. Then, Frank goes for the window and peers out, drawing back after a moment and shaking his head.

“Can’t see anything,” he tells them, then goes for the door instead.

Bonnie hurries alongside him, placing her hand over the doorknob to block his path. “Wait. Frank, it could be dangerous out there.”

“Relax,” he jokes, but it’s dry, unconvincing, and there’s no teasing glint in his eye. He rolls up his sleeves, preparing for something – Laurel doesn’t know what. “Ain’t nobody gonna eat my brains tonight, Bon.”

Her heart sinks, stomach sours as she watches him go from the living room – and so Laurel does what any intelligent, sane person would do with the threat of a zombie apocalypse looming just beyond the front door.

She walks right out into it.

Bonnie tries to stop her, but she pushes past, creeping out onto the porch behind Frank, not alerting him of her presence. She’s sure if he knew, he’d send her back inside, like some child he can dismiss, and she doesn’t want that. The night is warm, the air thick and smelling of the promise of rain. The lights are on in nearby houses, the buzz of the city still a hum in her bones. Laurel can even see a car driving on the road, like everything is perfectly normal. And it is. It must be.

She relaxes.

Then she promptly _un_ -relaxes, when she hears the sinister sound of crunching and chewing behind the immaculately landscaped bushes in the front yard.

Frank draws closer, cautiously. So does she. Neither of them are armed, and Laurel thinks for a minute that was probably a mistake – because when she gets close enough to peer over the railing on the porch, down onto the grass where the sound is coming from, she sees it.

It’s tall, lanky. Hunks of grey, decayed flesh cling loosely to its bones, which are visible all over its body; they look like they might slip off at any moment and collapse into a heap of skin and maggots and meat. It’s a corpse; human, in many ways, with two arms and two legs, but inhuman-like in so many others.

Namely, in the way it’s feasting on some poor, unsuspecting, chubby middle-aged woman who couldn’t run fast enough.

There’s blood everywhere, seeping into the flowerbeds, watering the flowers, so much Laurel can barely distinguish between blood and the woman’s entrails, which the thing shoves into its mouth like links of sausage. The woman is still twitching, her cries fading and growing quiet, as she drowns in her own blood. She’s still alive. Laurel’s stomach turns, bile rising hot in her throat. She’s not _dead_ yet.

“Holy _fuck_ …” Frank mutters in front of her, frozen in place, and Laurel thinks that’s as eloquently as anyone could put it.

“It’s real,” she breathes, and Frank jumps, turning back to look at her. She lets out a shaky breath. “Oh God, Frank…”

“The hell are you-” He exhales sharply and grabs her by the arm. “C’mon. Get inside. Get in! We’re barricading up the door.”

The thing – man, woman, whatever it is, or _was_ – glances up at them just then, and makes a sound; a low, wet half-moan, half-gurgle. It rises to stand and starts lurking toward them, not very quickly, nothing more than a lazy amble, but enough to make Laurel bolt back into the house as fast as her legs can carry her, with Frank hot on her heels. They slam the door behind them, and turn to face the others, who by now have all gathered in the foyer, wide-eyed and fearful. Even Bonnie looks terrified, and is doing a shitty job of hiding it for the sake of the others.

“Frank?” she asks, but he brushes past her and goes for the basement immediately.

“Find any plywood you can. And hammers. We’re…” His voice catches, composure faltering. He clears his throat, shaking it off. “We’re boarding up the door. And the windows”

“Boarding it up?” Michaela cries. “Frank, what the _hell_ was out there?”

“The hell you think?” he snaps. “You wanna go take a look? Be my guest.”

Asher half-looks like he’s about to take Frank up on that offer – when, out of nowhere, a series of loud, insistent bangs erupt on the other side of the front door. Michaela shrieks, hiding behind Connor, who shoves Oliver behind him too and starts backing away. Bonnie looks like she’s shrunk half a foot from the fear, too terrified to move a muscle.

So Laurel does what she’s good at, what she’s conditioned herself to do: she turns off her brain. She boots down into a state that’s more robotic than anything else, and follows Frank down the stairs, helping him lug up as much old plywood as he can find, which isn’t a lot, but they’ve got to make do. They drop what they’ve found in front of the door, just in time for the others to swarm around them, all yelling different things.

“Bro, what’re you doing?” Asher demands. “We gotta kill that thing!”

“Kill it?” Michaela screeches. “ _Kill it_? I-it’s already _dead_ , dumbass! How do we kill it?”

“We could run,” Connor speculates, lowly. “We should… we-we-we should run, get out. Ollie, we can take my car-”

“This can’t be real,” Wes mutters to himself, pacing back and forth. “This can’t be… This can’t be real, it can’t-”

“We can’t board up the door,” Bonnie protests. “Annalise… isn’t back yet. When she gets back-”

“ _Shut up_!” Frank bellows, silencing the rest of them as the bangs and moans outside crescendo. “ _If_ Annalise gets back and we’re all dead, Bon, what kinda good is that gonna do anyone? For now… we hunker down here, until we have a plan. If she comes back, great. But for all we know it’s a hell of a lot worse out there, and she’s already a goner. Maybe the whole block is – hell, maybe the whole _city_.”

“Then… we should get out,” Laurel chokes out, looking to Frank. “Right? Go somewhere less densely populated. Less people, less of those… things.”

“We’ll think of that later,” he says, and gestures to the toolbox they’d brought up from the basement. “Now c’mon. Everybody grab a hammer. Windows are first priority; they’ll break easier. Front door, too, before that thing decides to pay us a visit for dessert.”

So they do. They go for the windows first, using any bits of wood they can find. Frank dismantles parts of Bonnie’s desk with an expertise that surprises Laurel; she never would’ve pegged him as someone good with tools.

She never would’ve pegged him as someone willing to strangle an innocent girl to death too, though. So Laurel guesses maybe she’s not as good a judge of character as she thought. 

An hour into their work, the banging on the front door still hasn’t stopped, only grown louder, hungrier. But an hour into their work, another one starts – this time on the windows, accompanied by a familiar voice.

“Frank! _Frank_! Bonnie! There’s a – God, _help_!”

Annalise.

Frank moves as fast as lightning, and Laurel follows close behind though he tries to push her back. They reach the front door and find that the banging has stopped; apparently that thing has more interest in accessible food than inaccessible food, and decided to pursue Annalise instead. With a hammer in hand, Frank throws open the door and sprints down off the porch, just in time to see Annalise cornered against the gate as the thing slinks its way toward her, moaning and hissing. Nate is with her, looking around frantically for some kind of weapon.

“Stay back,” Frank barks at her, and when she continues following him he rounds on her, breathing heavily. “Get back in the fucking house, Laurel!”

At first, Laurel isn’t sure why. Then, she looks down the street, out by the sidewalk, and she sees them.

More of them. At least half a dozen, making their way toward the house, all in different ways: some stumbling, dragging themselves by their arms, limping. All in various states of decay, too; some fresh bodies, recently turned, some looking like they’ve been dead and buried for months.

That’s all the persuading she needs. She books it, running back into the house, just as Frank charges off the porch with the hammer, aiming it low, at the thing’s legs. Laurel slams the door shut behind her and presses her weight back against it – and for the most terrifying three minutes of her life, she waits. She can hear a struggle, faintly. Frank and the zombie – for lack of a better word. She waits, terrified that, upon opening the door, she’ll see Frank or Annalise being devoured by the thing, too.

She waits. Prays.

Finally, she hears footsteps on the porch steps. The door goes flying open, half-tossing her to the ground, and in scramble Frank, Annalise, and Nate, who is clutching Annalise to him like she’ll be torn away at any second. Frank’s hammer is bloody, covered with what looks like bits of brain matter. He has blood splattered on his waistcoat, and Nate has some on his uniform – but otherwise, they seem to be unscathed.

“There’s more of them. Out past the gate,” Nate tells them. “We closed it, and it’ll hold, but not forever.”

“W-what about that… thing?” Oliver asks, looking at Frank. “How did you…”

“Wouldn’t die,” Frank reports, as shaken as Laurel’s ever seen him. “I hit it in the leg. The stomach. The neck. Only thing that stopped it was hitting it in the head.”

Connor chuckles darkly. “Makes total sense. Go for the zombie’s brains. Because, y’know, that’s how it always is in movies!”

“Whatever,” Frank dismisses him. “All I know is that it worked. Bastard’s dead – again.”

Annalise pipes up, finally. “Now be quiet. All of you. Maybe if… they can’t hear us outside, they won’t go for the house.”

“But w-what if they can smell us?” Michaela demands. “Or… or detect our body heat through the walls, or-”

“Or nothing,” Nate cuts in, voice deep, quieting the others very effectively. “We need to calm down, come up with a plan. Panicking isn’t gonna do us any good. Might kill us faster than whatever those things are outside.”

Laurel thinks that’s debatable. She bites her tongue, though.

 

\--

 

Per Nate’s advice, they hunker down.

They set about gathering up whatever useful supplies they can find in the house. Laurel never dreamed she would be so grateful that Sam was actually a hardcore apocalypse prepper, because they find a stash of dried food and gallons of water in the basement – “from when the sorry son of a bitch was convinced the world was endin’ at the turn of the century,” Frank explains. There are some large hiking backpacks and other survival supplies too – a water purifier, camping stove, flashlights, a tent – which Frank tells her were from Annalise and Sam’s short-lived outdoorsy phase in the nineties, from which they quickly deduced that they were far better off remaining city-dwellers.

Mark that down as two things she’s grateful for. If somehow, miraculously, Sam Keating manages to piece the burned bits of himself back together and roam the earth again, she’ll be sure to thank him the next time she sees him.

There’re guns, too. Turns out Sam was a bit more paranoid than anyone had known, even Annalise. A pistol and a shotgun; add that to Nate’s duty pistol, and they have three. Frank takes the shotgun, despite the fact that Laurel’s pretty sure he doesn’t know how to shoot it. Annalise takes the pistol, cocking it immediately. Clearly, she _does_ know how to shoot, and somehow that doesn’t really surprise Laurel.

They settle down for a twisted sort of last supper, after that.  

They feast on whatever’s left in the fridge, because the power will almost certainly be going out sooner rather than later, the workers at the power plants abandoning their posts. The water, too – Laurel figures she can say goodbye to hot showers for the rest of her life, however long that may be. Which sucks. A lot of things suck. Hell – _everything_ fucking sucks, and she’s sure it’s not about to stop sucking any time soon, at least according to the emergency broadcasts on the dusty old radio they find underneath a layer of cobwebs in the basement.

It’s a crackly robotic voice playing on a loop, not even a human. Somehow that makes its message ten times more ominous.

“… Residents are advised to evacuate cities and other densely populated areas… The National Guard has been sent in to contain the situation. Deadly force, if necessary, will be used… President has declared a nationwide federal state of emergency… Safe zone… fifty miles north of the city of Philadelphia… Do not approach reanimated humans, known as walkers. They have been known to… and attempt to consume the living. Exercise extreme caution when venturing outside. If bitten-”

The signal cuts out right then, fading to a low buzz. Asher freaks out.

“If bitten _what_? W-what happens?”

“Nobody knows,” Laurel remarks solemnly, speaking up for the first time in hours. She’s awoken, switched back _on_ her brain, and now the crushing panic is raining down on her, squeezing the air from her lungs. “You… die, probably.”

“Or get infected,” Oliver pipes up, lips pressed into a grim line. “Then slowly die. Then… resurrect and turn into a zombie with no sense of the person you used to be, and try to devour all your loved ones as tasty snacks.”

Connor frowns. “Ollie…”

“You really think they don’t know?” Michaela asks, tucking her knees closer to her chest. “Who they were? They don’t remember their family, friends, other people?”

“That thing charged towards me like I was the most delicious piece of meat it’d ever seen,” Frank deadpans. “If they know, they sure as hell don’t care. They just wanna eat.”

They talk, for a while longer. Half-hearted jokes and conversation, speculation about the rest of the world – the Western hemisphere, Europe, China. Do they have it too? Is it only in the States? Are their governments collapsing? Are their dead rising in droves? Asher is, for some reason, certain everything is fine in the island of Madagascar, and jokes they should all catch the next flight there, though he knows as well as they all do that there’re no more flights. Soon there will be no more internet, no more cell towers. The others are frantically calling their families, Frank included – or trying to, because the signal is weakening as the towers shut down one by one, the power grid going dark.

Laurel finds their conversation only semi-interesting. It’s a hell of a lot more interesting instead, she decides, to watch everyone react to the end of the world.

Connor just clings desperately to Oliver, who seems surprisingly stoic. Michaela is whimpering, curled up in a ball, and Laurel can almost hear her reminding herself to breathe in her head, over and over. Asher is reviewing every zombie movie he’s ever seen, devising tactics for how to dodge and fight them. Bonnie is holding herself together, but only barely, and Laurel doesn’t miss her periodic sniffles, the glassy tears in her eyes. Annalise is all right; terrified like all the rest, no doubt, but hiding it well. Nate is a cop, trained for crisis situations. Laurel’s glad he’s here – though, admittedly, a zombie apocalypse scenario was probably not in his training.  

And Frank? Frank is… silent.

He tries to talk to Annalise, formulate some kind of plan, but she brushes him off coldly. It’s clear she’s still angry about Lila, but… It’s something deeper than that, something worse, and Laurel doesn’t know how she knows, but she does. Frank tries to talk to _her_ next, but Laurel feels so sick and hurt and confused whenever she sees him that she turns away, too, and so he winds up in a corner of the living room by himself, hammering away at a window with determination while the others eat. It makes her heart seize up inside her, to see him so alone while the world around them crumbles – but no. She stems the flow of her sympathy there. He’s a killer. A monster.

A killer, like she is. A monster, like they all are. But maybe that’s not so bad anymore.

This world is made for monsters, now.


	2. Act II

They resolve to get the hell out of Dodge. 

Frank and Nate become the _de facto_ leaders of the group. Under normal circumstances Laurel would protest, call Frank out on his patriarchal bullshit – but these circumstances are far from normal, and given that they have the approximate brute strength of a bull between them, and the best chance to take down walkers, she decides it’s probably a smart move.

“We need to get out of the city,” Frank announces to the group, as they sit on the couches and chairs in the living room around him. The drapes are closed, the only light coming from a few candles on the coffee table, the power having flickered off for the last time days ago. “Streets are swarming – you’ve seen ‘em. Our defenses aren’t gonna hold forever, and we’re running low on water.”

“So… where do we go?” Wes asks, brow furrowed.

Frank shrugs. He doesn’t have a clue, and the fact isn’t instilling a whole lot of confidence in his leadership abilities, in Laurel’s eyes at least.

“Somewhere remote. The countryside. Safe zone, if we can find it. I got a map.”

“A map,” Laurel scoffs. “What good is a damn _map_ going to do us?”

“What about gas?” Bonnie inquires. “We’ll be able to make it a little ways with what we have, maybe, but not much farther.”

“We’ll go on a supply run,” Nate says. “Siphon gas out of whatever cars we can find. Scavenge. It’s our best shot; we can’t stay here forever, and the situation in the city is only gonna get worse.”

Michaela frowns. “And get chewed up by those things the instant we step outside? No thanks.”

“You wanna die here, Michaela?” Connor sneers. “End up cannibalizing each other? Because FYI, no one is getting a piece of _this_ ass for dinner. Except Oliver.”

Laurel snorts. Oliver blushes. Nate frowns.

“Focus. We need volunteers for the supply run. I’ll go.”

Annalise raises her hand. As soon as she does, Bonnie does, too – and as soon as Bonnie does, Asher does, quick in succession. Frank holds up his hand, too, and glowers down at Laurel when he notices her do the same. Oliver tries to raise his, but Connor promptly yanks it back down, and neither Michaela nor Wes volunteer – which, if Michaela’s reaction to the initial outbreak and other recent crises is any indication, is probably for the best. Laurel thinks her wielding any kind of weapon would probably kill them all faster than any horde of the undead.

Nate nods, cataloguing the hands one by one. “Okay. Annalise. Bonnie. Asher. Laurel. Frank, you stay here. We need someone to guard the house.”

“Uh uh.” Frank shakes his head. “Laurel, you aren’t goin’.”

She scoffs, furious to be undermined in front of everyone. “Excuse me?”

“It’s too dangerous,” he explains. “Let me go instead.”

“No, we need you here,” Nate tells him, firmly. “If Laurel isn’t going, we need a replacement. Three is too few, even with guns.”

Oliver raises his hand again. “I’ll go. I can-”

“ _Shh_ ,” Connor shushes him, glaring. “No. You’re not leaving this house, you hear me? _No_.”

“Well, I-I want to go. I want to be helpful. So… you don’t get to tell me I can’t,” Oliver declares, and nods at Nate, who nods back in silent affirmation.  

Laurel can see the look of panic on Connor’s face, plain as day. The thought of losing Oliver seems to scare him more than venturing out into the actual zombie apocalypse itself, and so finally he exhales sharply, relenting.

“Fine. Then I’m coming with you.”

“That makes five,” Annalise says. “That’s enough. Nate and I will take two of the guns. Frank’s stays here. The rest of you, bring axes, hammers, baseball bats – hell, the damn trophy… whatever you can find to use as a weapon. Got it?”

Everyone nods. Those going on the run assemble near the door with their weapons, and depart without much fanfare, besides Michaela’s tearful hugs with Connor and Oliver – and almost Asher, who she brushes away at the last minute. They slip out the front door after that, into the chaos, and Laurel watches them vanish around the side of one of the nearby houses from the upstairs window in Annalise’s bedroom, her stomach roiling with dread.

They could come back wounded. Bitten. Or they could just not come back at all. And that’s the world they live in, now, where murder and death is just another day at the office.

Well, murder and death has always been just another day at _this_ office. But that’s beside the point.

“You okay?”

A deep voice startles Laurel out of her thoughts, and she turns, finding Frank standing in the doorway. He hasn’t changed his clothes in days; there’s still blood from the walker streaked across his waistcoat, and his sleeves are wrinkled, his hair gel no doubt starting to congeal. His eyes are soft though, filled with so much gentleness that it almost makes her forget, for an instant, what he did to Lila Stangard on the roof of that sorority house all those months ago, long before the world went to hell. But she remembers quick enough and turns away, back toward the window. They haven’t been alone since this shitstorm started, and she doesn’t particularly want that to change now.

“Fine.”

She hopes he’ll get the message, leave her be – and he does, most likely, but he doesn’t leave her be. Instead he just walks over and takes his place at her side, peering out onto the deserted street, littered with crashed cars and garbage and other things thrown haphazardly in the chaos. The skies above are a suitably grim shade of grey, clouds heavy with rain.

“Laurel…”

“Go away,” she chokes out, throat tightening as she surveys the destruction, the gravity of the situation hitting her all at once. “Frank, just-”

“You’re not okay. None of us are,” he interrupts, gently. “Not bein’ okay is our new normal. But don’t push me away, Laurel – not now. We need each other, with all that’s goin’ on in the world. And I… I need you. I _love_ you.”

He looks so broken, she thinks. He’s lost his family, lost everything he’s ever known, same as her. His blue eyes are two pools of tender vulnerability, wide open, the pieces of himself spread all over for her to see, and she wavers ever so slightly, before shaking her head.

“What you did…” Laurel murmurs, tears beading in her eyes. “To Lila… How can I ever forget that, Frank? _Forgive_ that?”

“I know. And I’m gonna spend… the rest of my life, however long I got left, makin’ up for that. I will. I swear. I don’t – I don’t know how, but I will.”

“Don’t bother,” she remarks, hollowly. “The world is your oyster now. Made for murderers.”

That wounds him, it’s clear to see. “Laurel-”

“You had no right, you know. To tell Nate I couldn’t go with them,” she bites out. “I’m not some little kid. You don’t get to… to bench me, make me sit in the corner when I could be out there, being useful-”

Frank reaches out, placing a hand on her arm, trying to get her to look at him. “Yeah, being useful and getting chewed to bits. I was tryin’ to protect you-”

“Yeah, well,” she hisses, shrugging him off and backing away. “I don’t need you to protect me. And you may need me, Frank, but I don’t need _you_.”

She leaves him with that, coldly, and breaks down as soon as she’s alone.

That had been a lie; the worst one she’s ever told, maybe. She’s never needed him more than she does now.

 

\--

 

They make it out of the city alive, and unscathed – just barely.

The others return from their supply run thankfully unharmed, and bring with them two more guns – nothing big, just pistols pulled off dead bodies in the street – and a few cans of gas for the trip, amongst other things. They’re unharmed psychically, but they come back with the distant, haunted looks of combat vets in their eyes, scarred by the things they’d seen. Connor tells her some of the stories while they’re on the road. Young walkers – little kids they’d had to put down. They’d watched a horde attack a man trying to scavenge too, piling on him relentlessly as he screamed, begging for mercy, his pleas falling on unhearing ears and unseeing eyes.

They load up everything useful they can pack in Connor’s SUV and Frank’s BMW in the morning, and pile inside – and just as they’re about to start the car and drive through the gate, which is growing increasingly surrounded by a throng of ravenous walkers, Wes calls out, halting everyone.

“Wait. _Wait_!”

Something has caught his eye. At first, Laurel isn’t sure what it is – until she follows his gaze over to the fence, and freezes when she sees one of the walkers at the front of the pack, reaching through the gate and groping at the air.

Long dark hair, one half of it braided. A familiar leather jacket. Torn jeans. Laurel thinks she can even see some of the huge, dark circles of eye shadow she’d always worn in life. _She_.

It’s her.

“Rebecca?”

Everyone freezes. Frank yells at Wes to come on, _hurry the hell up_ , but he looks like a zombie himself, approaching the gate, eyes wide with disbelief. The others watch from the car, as Laurel pokes her head out and then jumps back onto the driveway, keeping her distance, watching with tears in her eyes. The corpse that used to be Rebecca Sutter is moaning, gurgling, her face grey and half-eaten by maggots, her cheek hollowed out to the bone, her eyes staring blankly into the abyss. She reaches out for Wes when he gets closer, mindlessly grabbing at thin air, trying to reach her next meal.

A sob escapes Wes. “Rebecca…”

He wants to go to her, Laurel can tell. Go to her. Hug her. Hold her, but every time he gets close she just starts growling louder and rattling the gate. Laurel doesn’t know how much longer it’ll hold back the gathering mob, but she stays put, has the good sense not to interrupt.

“Rebecca, don’t you…” His voice breaks. “Don’t you… know me? It’s Wes, I-”

Rebecca just moans, louder, snapping at him like a rabid dog in a cage and making him jump back. Even from a distance Laurel can see the tears in his eyes, and so she strides over to Frank, holding out her hand.

“Give me your gun.”

He hesitates. “Laurel-”

“ _Give it to me_.”

Frank pauses, again. Then, he sighs and hands it over, and she makes her way over to Wes, feeling her throat tighten as he looks at Rebecca – the girl he’d loved, defended, killed for. Dead, like none of it had ever mattered. A hollow shell, not a person. Her – but not _her_.

“Wes,” she tries to soothe him, her voice catching. “Wes, that’s not… Rebecca, anymore, okay?”

“It is,” he insists, holding back a sob. “It’s… this is her, Laurel-”

She shakes her head, looking at him with pity in her eyes. “It’s not, Wes. You know it’s not.”

“But she must-” He shakes his head, as Rebecca reaches for him again. “She must be in there somewhere, right? Some part of her, still. S-some part of her can still hear me.”

Wes is looking at her, eyes wide, full of hope. Laurel doesn’t know what to say; she just looks at him, choking back her own tears, and shakes her head.

“I don’t know,” is what she settles on, finally. “Maybe. Maybe part of her can.”

The gate is rattling more insistently, now. Wes’s presence has attracted other walkers by the road, and they’re swarming like flies around a corpse – which they may all become soon, if they don’t get out of here. So with that in mind Laurel composes herself, and nods down at the gun in her hands.

“You want me to, or…?”

“No,” Wes says, taking it from her, his eyes hardening suddenly. “No. I’ll do it.”

He’s sobbing outright, now, but he raises the gun nonetheless and aims it at Rebecca’s head, as she continues to growl and moan and reach out for him – and Laurel wants to believe she’s reaching for him because she knows it’s him, because some tiny part of her still has her memories, her humanity, but she knows that’s wishful thinking. Stupid, useless idealism. She used to be an idealist.

She’s not, anymore. The apocalypse kind of takes it out of you, sometimes.

“I’m sorry,” Wes tells her, through his tears. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-”

He pulls the trigger.

Rebecca stops moaning, after that.

They make their way back over to the cars, after. Wes hops into Connor’s SUV with her, and the instant he does he comes face to face with Annalise, who is eyeing him like she’s not sure what he’ll do, if he’ll scream at her, try to reach for a gun and shoot her again, but Wes doesn’t do any of those things; his face just crumples, and he shakes his head, more hurt than she’s ever seen another human being look.

“You told me she was dead, but… I-I didn’t believe it, I didn’t, I thought-”

Laurel wraps her arms around him, holding him close as Connor starts the engine. 

In the backseat, Bonnie looks paler than she’s ever seen her.

 

\--

 

Seven hours later, Frank’s car runs out of gas, conveniently enough, on a freeway littered with abandoned cars.

Laurel also nearly becomes a walker’s lunch on that same freeway.

She isn’t sure exactly where they are when they stop – in the middle of nowhere, that’s for damn sure. Maybe it’s Ohio, maybe Virginia. The mass exodus of people from cities left most of the highways blocked by thousands of cars; all but impassable, but chock full of supplies – and most importantly, an abundance of gasoline. Nate sets about siphoning more from the abandoned cars, while Frank keeps watch and the others fan out across the road, rummaging through cars to scavenge whatever supplies they can.

Laurel isn’t sure how she didn’t hear them sooner.

Walkers: two of them, fat and lumbering sacks of flesh, lurking up behind her as she leans over into the window of a red Prius to dig through its glove compartment. She doesn’t know what she’s hoping to find – anyone driving a Prius was probably about as ill-prepared for the apocalypse as _she_ was – but she searches for a while even so, before an all too familiar gurgling moan behind her makes her blood run cold.

She turns, just in time to see them ambling towards her – and Laurel has never been one to scream, but the sight of them, grey and ghastly and hurtling in her direction, makes her scream as loud as she can, the shrill sound echoing across the deserted freeway and startling the others. She bolts at once, ducking between cars and vaulting over hoods. Luckily they’re slower than she is – but their speed doesn’t matter much when Laurel finds herself boxed in between two cars and the walkers, with nowhere to go. She trips over a loose car door lying in the road, hitting her head against the ground so hard that her vision spins, and her body goes limp. She tries to tell her legs to move, but they won’t answer; they feel like jelly, useless, her knees and palms scraped and bleeding. All she can see when she raises her head is the walkers coming at her, hissing, snarling, reaching out their grubby fingers for her. And she knows it, then.

Knows that this is how she dies.

So she squeezes her eyes shut, shields her face with her arms, though she knows it won’t make a difference, and waits – for the first damning bite, the relentless gnashing of filthy, infected teeth, the hideous chomping as she’s eaten alive.

It never comes. Instead, she hears two blasts from a shotgun, followed by Frank’s voice, gruff and breathless.

“ _Laurel_!”

Through her blurry vision, she manages to make out the sight of Frank, running over and kneeling beside her, while the others form a circle, watching with concern on their faces. He places his hands on her arms, gazing up and down her body, no doubt to inspect for bites.

“Hey,” he manages to choke out, and reaches down to place his hand on her cheek. She tries to focus her eyes, but finds she can’t. “You okay? They… Any of ‘em bite you?”

She shakes her head and sits up with his help, wincing when she does. “No.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” she affirms, and presses a hand to her forehead. Her palm is sticky and red when she draws it back, and her stomach churns. “My head…”

“Get her into Connor’s car and lay her down,” Michaela orders. “I was pre-med. I’ll look at her there, see if she has a concussion.”

Vaguely, Laurel is aware of being lifted into someone’s arms – almost certainly Frank’s, and she thinks it’s the safest she’s felt since all this started. They set her down in the back of Connor’s car, and Michaela sets about looking her over, gazing into her eyes with a flashlight, then dabbing at the gash on her head with a piece of gauze and diagnosing her with a minor concussion – nothing that’ll kill her, thankfully, but will keep her laid up for a few days. In her state she isn’t sure, but she thinks she can see Frank kneeling beside her too, eyes filled to the brim with worry. He seems to realize that she’s looking at him, just then, and clears his throat, making a move to hop out the back of the car, assuming he’s not wanted there.

“I’ll, uh, I’ll give you space,” he tells Michaela, who nods.

Maybe it’s the concussion. Maybe it’s the fear, the insanity, the chaos around them driving her half-mad, or maybe it’s the fact that she doesn’t have the energy to lie to herself, anymore – but whatever reason may be behind it, Laurel reaches out and catches his wrist right then, making a soft sound of disapproval.

“No,” she whispers, wetting her dry lips. “Stay.”

Frank pauses. Something warm flickers in his eyes, and he melts, his shoulders slumping, as he lowers himself back down beside her, nodding without a word. Relieved, she sews her fingers in with his and holds on for dear life, because that’s all that’s grounding her: his hand in hers. The only thing keeping her from going crazy, in this nightmare of a world they live in.

_He’s_ the only thing keeping her from going crazy, and God help her, even after everything he’s done… She can’t stop needing him.

Frank stays. Of course he does; she doesn’t have to ask to know he’d do anything for her. The way he presses a tender kiss to her forehead, and the firmness with which he holds her hand, tell her all she needs to know, loud and clear.


	3. Act III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still chuggin along!! I'm honestly having a blast with this fic, so if you could drop me a kudo/comment to tell me what you think, I'd love to hear it!

They head for the safe zone they’d heard about just northwest of the city.

But apparently, during the evacuation, everyone else had had the exact same idea.

It’s overrun when they get there, teeming with walkers, the most _un_ safe safe zone Laurel has ever seen in her life. They meet a group of survivors about as big as they are on the road out, who tell them there was an outbreak there, too; officials hadn’t been careful enough with screening, had let a few bitten slip by, and it’d all spread like wildfire after that.

So, along with the majority of the world, the safe zone has gone to shit. That’s no longer an option. They barely escape it with their lives, weak from hunger, and resolve to set up a temporary camp a ways off the freeway while they regroup and come up with another plan, sleeping in their cars and the few tents they’d managed to salvage from various stops in little towns along the way.

Laurel sleeps with Frank in his, on an old, lumpy sleeping bag, with his arms curled around her and her face buried in his chest. Ever since being attacked she’s barely left his side, and he’s done the same, scarcely letting her out of his sight for more than a minute, always two steps behind her, like a veritable bodyguard. It’s not what it used to be, not kissing or sex or any of that. She’s not sure she’s ready to be like that with Frank, again. But this… is trust. Safety. Something deeper than what they had before.

And maybe, just maybe, Laurel thinks, things can be okay between them, again. He still hasn’t explained Lila to her and by now she’s not entirely sure she wants to know; she has more important to things to worry about, and it’s in the past. All the murder, all the death, all the secrets… It’s in the past.

But as it turns out, anarchy, near-constant hunger, and one certain Puppy with a bone have a funny way of trudging up that past.

The sound of yelling outside their tent one evening makes Frank frown, and he grabs his gun, making his way out cautiously. Clad in the same black jacket and jeans and boots she’s had on since this hell started, Laurel follows, her head still bandaged, and comes upon a peculiar sight: Wes, standing before Annalise and Nate, holding what looks like a bottle of some kind of liquor – part of the stash Asher had found last week in an old RV, Laurel thinks. He looks angry, eyes wild, bloodshot from a lack of sleep, and she knows he hasn’t been. He hasn’t been sleeping at all since he saw the thing that used to be Rebecca, withdrawing into himself, into a place no one can reach him, hardly speaking a word – and now, it seems his frustrations have bubbled over.

“I want to know,” Wes slurs, voice accusatory, pointing at Annalise. “I… I want to know. How she died. And _don’t_ lie to me this time.”

The others have started to gather too, all hanging back, spectating from a distance. Frank makes his way to the front of the group, taking his place beside Annalise, who gives him a brief, cursory glance, before looking back at Wes.

“You want to know?” she asks, voice low and measured. “Do you really want to know?”

Wes blinks, then nods. “Yes. Y-yes, I want to know.”

The others listen up, at that. Annalise pauses, pursing her lips. Frank glances around furtively. Then-

“I did it. I killed her.”

Everyone freezes, then turns, slowly, to find Bonnie approaching the group from behind, arms folded. Annalise’s eyes widen. Laurel freezes. Oliver’s mouth drops open, horrified to be in the presence of a murderer, and oh, Laurel thinks, how little he knows. Wes gapes for a moment, as Bonnie comes to a stop before him, her face blank, impassive like a statue. Tears flood his eyes, and the bottle of liquor in his hand goes tumbling to the ground, spilling onto the grass, and prompting Asher to cringe.

“What?” Wes breathes, the word hardly audible.

Bonnie sucks in a breath, surprisingly calm. “She was… she was going to talk, Wes. We all would’ve gone down, including you. And I…” she drifts off. “I thought she was guilty. I was _so sure_ she’d killed Lila, but-”

“She didn’t. Sam didn’t, either,” Annalise cuts her off, and suddenly there’s something in her eyes, some kind of determination, some kind of fury that makes Laurel nervous – because she turns to Frank with the look still in her eyes, and announces, point-blank:

“He did.”

A gasp washes over the group, as everyone inhales collectively. Hurt flashes in Frank’s eyes. Annalise shrugs, purposely nonchalant. “What? This is the end of the world. Might as well get everything out on the table now, when we’ve got nothing to lose.”

“What?” Connor mutters, furrowing his brow. “No… n-no, _Sam_ killed Lila, and-”

He trails off, not wanting to finish that sentence in front of Oliver. Michaela does it for him, not bothering to hold back, “We killed Sam, and… a-and that was only okay _because_ he killed Lila.”

“ _We_ killed Sam?” Oliver echoes, turning to Connor, half-hysterical. “Connor… Connor, tell me you didn’t have anything to do with that. _Connor_!”

Connor doesn’t. He can’t. He doesn’t look Oliver in the eyes, and Oliver just stares at him, so broken and betrayed that it kills Laurel – because she knows how it feels. Being lied to, over and over. She remembers how raw it’d felt at first, that betrayal; how it’d _stung_ , an unimaginable kind of pain.

Nate steps forward, frowning at Frank. “ _You_ … killed Lila Stangard?”

The others take steps forward, all but boxing Frank in, yelling and screaming, their words mingling into an unintelligible mess. They turn on him in mere seconds – and Annalise watches. Does nothing. Just _watches_ , eyes hollow, like this is maybe what she’s wanted for Frank all along – to throw him to the dogs – and the thought makes Laurel want to be sick. Connor reaches out to grab Frank, raising his voice, and Frank shrugs him off roughly, so roughly that the smaller man goes stumbling backward and lands in the dirt.

It all descends into chaos, after that.

With fire in his eyes, Connor gets back up, tackling Frank with a growl. Frank lands a punch square in his face, knocking him down once more, and then has to defend himself against Michaela, who goes for him with her claws out, screeching, jumping all over him, scratching at any bit of his exposed skin she can reach. Laurel manages to wrangle her off, yelling at them all to calm down, but only seconds later, the next time she looks up from her tussle with Michaela, she finds Frank in Nate’s chokehold, struggling against him, gasping for breath as the other man holds him still.  

And then, she sees Annalise approaching, pistol in hand. She watches Annalise cock it and press it up against Frank’s temple, a dangerous look in her eyes; a _deadly_ look, like she’s staring at a pesky gnat and couldn’t care less whether or not it lives or dies.

“I should kill you,” she tells him, straight-faced, lethal. “Right here, right now, for what you did to that poor girl. What you did to my _baby_.”

Laurel hears what she says, and she doesn’t know what it means, but she goes lunging toward them nonetheless, not knowing what she’s planning on doing but only knowing she has to do _something_. But Connor catches her before she gets far, holds her back, growling in her ear, voice rough and sinister and biting.

“Let her do it,” he hisses, blood dripping from his nose, teeth barred. “He’s the one who started all this. We… we-we never would’ve killed _anyone_ if it wasn’t for him!”

“He’s right,” Michaela spits. “He should… he should pay-”

Laurel barely recognizes her own voice; it comes out in a shriek, hoarse and desperate. “No. _No_! Don’t kill him, don’t touch him, this is – this is… Let him go, lethimgo-”

A voice, deep, bellowing, firm, silences them all in a heartbeat.

“ _Enough_!”

Nate.

He releases Frank without warning, and he goes stumbling forward onto the grass, gasping for breath, landing on his knees. Laurel goes to him at once, breaking free from Connor’s hold on her, kneeling beside him, and watching from the ground as Nate scowls and grabs the gun out of Annalise’s hands, tucking it away before raising his voice at the rest of them.

“No one’s killing anyone, you understand me? We got more than enough walkers out there who want to do that already; if we kill each other we’ll just be weaker, and weaker, and then we’ll all end up dead. We’re starving and it’s making us all go crazy. We _do not_ get to be judge, jury, and executioner here-”

“Who else is gonna be, huh?” Connor demands, throwing up his arms. “Th-there’s no laws, anymore. No jail. No way for him to pay – for _both_ of them to pay.”

“If we’re killing Frank, and we’re killing Bonnie,” Nate shoots back, “why don’t we kill the rest of you too? I seem to remember you saying something about killing Sam Keating.”

“But…” Michaela sputters. “But… I-I never _killed_ anyone-”

Nate lowers his voice, taking a deep breath. “An eye for an eye’ll get us all killed. We’re saving our bullets for the walkers, _not_ using them on each other. Is that clear?”

Meekly, everyone nods, even Annalise. Nate exhales sharply, then takes another look around before withdrawing back into his tent with a huff, as if sickened by their behavior. It only takes Laurel one glance around at everyone’s faces to know that this is what they’ve become, and they know it: animals, adapting to a new and brutal world. They’re becoming animals, wired to run on instinct instead of morals and ethics, and it terrifies her, because maybe this had been in them all along, hidden deep, just waiting to break free; it’d shown itself in flashes, this savageness, with Sam, with Sinclair, but now it’s been unleashed in them, wholly and completely. Maybe they’re exactly the right kind of people to make it in this world.

The thought makes Laurel want to puke all over again. She doesn’t _want_ to be the right kind of person to make it in this world.

“Frank,” she pants, placing her hands on his cheeks, trying to get him to look her in the eyes as he gasps for breath. “Just breathe. Keep breathing…”

Eventually, his breathing slows, and he composes himself, clearing his throat and letting out a sigh of relief when he finally meets her eyes. She makes herself smile comfortingly, her hands gripping him with newfound desperation – and for a second, she’s so sure he’s going to grin back, give her one of his cocky little smirks that’ve been conspicuously absent since this all started.

But he doesn’t. Instead something in him changes, his eyes darkening, and he shakes his head, pulling away from her.

“Maybe Hair Gel’s right. Maybe you shoulda just let ‘em shoot me.”

With that, Frank gets to his feet, dusts himself off, and ambles over to take a seat at the edge of camp, where the ring of firelight and the darkness meet.

She frowns, watching him go in silence.

 

\--

 

They’re a camp divided after that night, and the lines are clearly drawn.

Oliver isn’t talking to Connor. Wes may or may not be plotting Bonnie’s murder. Laurel’s fairly certain _everyone_ is plotting Frank’s murder – or if they’re not, they’re doing a very good job ostracizing him instead. Annalise won’t even spare him a glance. Michaela and Connor make snide comments under their breaths about him being worse than Sam, and they turn against Laurel too the instant they figure out that she knew about Lila all along and kept it from them.

She can see the way it weighs on Frank, makes him drag, almost like he’s sinking down into the ground wherever he walks. He’s quiet, quieter than she’s ever seen, and he holds her at night but some piece of him is so obviously missing, being chipped away day by day. _The world is your oyster_ , she’d told him when this had begun, full of spite and so, so sure he’d thrive in a violent, bloody place like this.

But she’s starting to think Frank wasn’t built for this at all. Not built for killing. Not built for brutality. Not built for any of it.

She comes upon him early one morning in their tent, loading up a backpack and cleaning his shotgun. Clearly he’s preparing to go somewhere, and she frowns, stepping inside.

“Hey. What’re you doing?”

For a moment, Laurel just takes a long, hard look at him. His slacks and waistcoat are in tatters, stained with blood and grass and dirt and all other manner of things. He isn’t slicking his hair back anymore, and it makes him look a bit wilder, a tad more reckless, but that isn’t what makes her freeze – no, it’s the look in his eyes that does that. It’s hopeless. Fatalistic, like a dead man who’s walking and knows it, and doesn’t give a single fuck.

“Supply run back to the city,” he explains. “We need more stuff. A radio. Ammo. Med kit, ‘case Doucheface falls and slices his arm open again.”

“The city?” she breathes. “Frank, the city’s infested, we can’t go back there – and you definitely can’t go by yourself.”

“It’s for the good of the group,” he mutters, not meeting her eyes. “Everybody’s gotta pitch in, and ‘sides, not like I got anything better to do.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Laurel insists, moving closer and standing over him. “Martyr yourself like this. And to… what? Make it up to everyone else? Y-you think you risking your life for some stupid _supplies_ is gonna get Annalise to forgive you?”

“It’s for the good of the group,” he repeats, more firmly this time. Determination is set in his eyes, unwavering. “Oliver needs his HIV meds, too. He told me the name. I’m doin’ this for the others.”

“ _Don’t_ ,” she hisses. “Don’t bullshit me, Frank, you’re not doing this for them. Y-you’re doing this because you need to… I don’t know, redeem yourself. For Lila. For whatever happened between you and Annalise. And I’m telling you it’s _not_ going to work; it’s a suicide mission!”

Frank pauses, as he slings the pack over his shoulders. A crooked grin pulls at his lips. “You really don’t got much faith in me, do you?”

He’s going, she realizes. Going, whether she likes it or not, no matter what she says to stop him. He’s a man on a mission to redeem himself in the eyes of Annalise and the others even if he winds up dead in the process, and _God_ , she wants to slap him for being so stupid, but she knows that won’t do any good. So instead she sucks in a breath and reaches for her own backpack, raising her chin defiantly.

“Fine. Then I’m coming too.”

Fear floods his eyes, out of nowhere. “No – Laurel, don’t pull this.”

“Pull what?” She feigns obviousness. “I want to be helpful. And pretty much everyone around here but you is shunning me too now, so. I might as well come along.”

“Laurel-”

“Come on,” she pushes. “Are we going or not? We’re wasting daylight.”

For a moment, Frank pauses. She thinks, in that moment, that he might back down, set down his pack, and see reason, but finally he lets out a breath and reaches down for the pistol resting on the ground; one of the many they’ve accumulated in recent days. He holds it out to her, and it makes her stomach twist to see him choose this. But she takes it nonetheless, nodding.

He eyes her closely. “You know how to shoot that thing?”

“Yeah,” she tells him, straight-faced, and cocks the gun to prove it. “My father taught me. It was the only thing he ever did.”

Frank nods, grimly, and steps outside the tent. “C’mon. My car has enough gas to get us there and back. We can stop for more along the way if we need to.”

Laurel nods. Can’t help but feel, for a second, like she’s walking straight into her own death.

But if she is, at least she’s got him walking right at her side.

 

\--

 

The city is even worse than it was when they fled.

The streets are full to bursting with walkers. Tanks lay abandoned. Helicopters are downed. At some point they’d tried to drop bombs to clear the city, leaving many of the buildings in shambles. They avoid the hospital, knowing it’ll be chock full of patients turned walkers, and go to a fairly sizable pharmacy instead, rummaging through the shelves until they find Oliver’s medication and some other antibiotics – not that Laurel thinks antibiotics can really fight whatever disease this is, but she’s sure they might be useful to have somewhere down the road. The place is blessedly free of walkers, and they manage to slip in and out relatively undetected, aside from the two Frank has to put down on the way in, using her axe to keep the droves of others from hearing.

So she starts to relax, thinking, maybe, that they’ll be okay, if they’re quick, quiet, and sure-footed.

And they are all of those things. And they find themselves staring down a veritable mob as soon as they set foot outside the building anyway.

There’re too many to count; dozens, an infestation of decay and death slinking towards them. The sight makes her go rigid with terror, the smell making her gag, making her eyes water – and then, she catches sight of one of the walkers leading the pack.

Her legs almost give out underneath her. Her stomach turns, bile rising in her throat. She feels like someone has sucker-punched all the air out of her.

Because Lila Stangard’s long, flame-red hair is unmistakable, even in death. She isn’t wearing the clothes she was wearing when she died; she’s clad in a knee-length white dress with a pattern of flowers, ripped and torn and filthy. No doubt her mother had picked that dress out for her. Laurel can remember her mother, the profound sadness that’d hung over the woman when they’d spoken. She wonders if she's dead, too. Hopes she is. Hopes she didn’t live to see _this_.

Lila has been dead for months, but her body is still in surprisingly good condition; her flesh discolored, chunks of it missing, one arm gone, the gashes from her autopsies visible, but face relatively intact. Her mouth is dropped open, making that same hideous noise as all the rest of them: the awful, eternal, insatiable moan of hunger.

Laurel knows it. Knows this is her. And she glances sideways at Frank, and one look at his face – pale, blue eyes wide, stiff as a statue – is all it takes to know that he does, too.

“Frank…” she says, not knowing how she’s planning on finishing that sentence. She has no clue what to say, if there’s even anything she _can_ say.

Frank looks like he’s about to be sick. To be confronted with irrefutable, gruesome evidence of his crime, what he’d done to her, an innocent girl… He seems to shrink beneath Lila’s unseeing gaze, unmoving, even as the horde inches towards them. He can’t look away; Laurel isn’t even sure he’s breathing. She can see the guilt on his face too; the self-loathing. Frank clenches his jaw, eyes glassy. She’s never seen a look like that before, ever. Laurel doesn’t even really know how to describe it. The only thing she knows is that he looks like he’s about ready to run over and let her bite him and take him with her, let her kill him, give him what he deserves.

They’re getting closer. The groans are louder. Panicked, Laurel starts tugging on his arm, calling his name.

“Frank!” she cries, but he won’t move. He’s planted himself firmly on the road like he’s rooted there, not budging an inch. “Frank, _come on_. Frank, please, come on!”

He still isn’t moving. He going to let her kill him, Laurel realizes. Let them all kill him. An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, like Nate said – it’s a primal kind of code, but it’s what he believes right then. She knows it’s true, and so, operating on sheer instinct, she reaches for her pistol and fires a shot, hitting directly between Lila’s eyes. She falls, limp and lifeless once more on the ground, and only then does Frank come back to himself, snapping out of his trance-like state.

“Come on!” she yells again, over the grotesque cacophony of walkers around them.

Thankfully, this time, he does.

Somehow, by some God-given miracle – though Laurel doesn’t believe in God, never has and still doesn’t, especially not now – they manage to duck around a corner and slip into what looks like some kind of old abandoned office building, darting up three flights of stairs and barricading the door behind them. The mob, single-minded as ever, continues hurtling forward, chasing an invisible prey down another alleyway. They scan the room full of grey, dismal cubicles quickly, listening for the telltale moans – and upon hearing none and deciding that they’re finally safe, Laurel unleashes on him.

She goes wild, like a madwoman, hitting Frank’s chest, swearing at him, calling him all sorts of names, screaming so loud that the walkers on the street can probably hear her, but she doesn’t care.

“You idiot! You fucking _asshole_! Y-you were just gonna… let her kill you, God, fuck you, _fuck you_ , how could you-” A sob rattles through her, harsh and gut-wrenching, making her chest ache. “Don’t you know how much I need you? D-don’t you know how much I _love_ you? If something ever happened to you – Fuck you, Frank, you’re so stupid…”

“Hey, hey,” he soothes, catching her wrists, stilling them at once. “ _Shh, shh_. I’m okay. Stop, Laurel, please.”

She bursts into ugly, violent sobs as soon as she hears the tender lilt in his voice, and throws her arms around him, squeezing so tight that she isn’t sure he can breathe. She sobs into his shoulder, tears and snot dampening the shoulder of his waistcoat, and when she finally draws back to look at him she can feel how red her face must be, her eyes puffy and swollen, her hair a wind-blown mess framing her face and covered with grime from not bathing in nearly a week. But Frank reaches up to touch her cheek with all the love in the world nonetheless, like he’s touching something holy, like he’s beholding the last good, pure thing on earth, in all of this madness.

“You mean that?” he asks, timidly, and this is a man whose faced down walkers by the dozen without flinching, but he’s as timid as she’s ever seen now, like a schoolboy. “You love me?”

“’Course I do,” she sniffles, voice still harsh. “How could you… h-how could you not know that?”

Frank grins weakly, at that. “Well, for starters, you told me to my face that you didn’t.”

“I was… mad,” she sputters. “So _mad_ , and upset, and it made me sick, what you did. And it still does, kind of. And I’m not okay with it – a-and I never will be, ever, but… God, Frank…”

“That was her. Lila,” he remarks, suddenly distant again. “I did that to her. Strangled her, killed her baby. Both of ‘em. I deserve… to burn for that, and you know it.”

She doesn’t know what to say – because yes, he does. He does deserve to burn, and he’s a monster, but they’re _all_ monsters now, with blood on their hands, living or dead. Laurel doesn’t know what to tell him, and so she just lets another sob escape her and falls into his arms again, her hands roaming his back as if needing to remind herself, over and over, that he’s here, that he’s real, and that he’s okay.

She loves him. _Hates_ him. Knows he deserves to burn yet can’t bear to let that happen. But they’re already in hell, Laurel figures, as Frank wraps his arms around her, building a stronghold for the both of them.

They’re already in hell. They’re already burning.


	4. Act IV

It stops becoming a matter of her forgiving Frank, that day. It becomes a matter of Frank forgiving himself.

She sees it happen slowly, day by day, like a puzzle being pieced back together. She sees it when Frank returns from the city with enough of Oliver’s medication to last months, and he and Connor nearly break down in tears. Connor’s thank-you is terse, brief, but genuine. It’s something, Laurel knows. It’s progress. She sees it when Frank fends off a group of four walkers when they invade camp and go after Michaela. She barely makes it out alive, and clings to Frank so tightly afterward that his face nearly starts turning purple. Her thank-you is just as awkward and cold – but it’s still something.

It’s still progress.

Annalise, however, remains just as cold toward him, and after Frank tells Laurel the whole story – the hotel room, the bug, the car accident, the baby, Sam, all of it – she can’t say she blames her much. Bonnie apologizes for her, says maybe she’ll come around soon. Laurel isn’t so sure about that, but she doesn’t remark on it, because Frank seems hopeful.

And hope is all they’ve got, these days. 

For a while, things are okay. Good, even – well, as good as it can get in a zombie apocalypse, that is. They move camps every so often, always making sure to keep them as remote as possible while still having access to supplies in the city. Nate, as it turns out, knows how to hunt, and that, coupled with Michaela’s fishing knowledge – “Shut up, okay? I grew up in a Louisiana bayou; I had to know how to fish.” – keeps them fed well enough. Connor was a boy scout, and has a better-than-expected grasp on survival techniques. Asher, for his part, seems to have an uncanny ability to find liquor whenever they go on scavenging trips.

It does help take the edge off the end of the world, Laurel has to admit.

“Y’all are my bros, you know that?” Asher slurs one night as everyone – minus Nate, who’s on watch – is gathered around the campfire cooking dinner. He slings his arms around her and Connor’s shoulders, yanking them close. “You know what? If I got to choose who I was gonna spend the apocalypse with, I wouldn’t choose _anybody_ else.”

“Really?” Oliver grins. “Because I think I would’ve chosen Bear Grylls.”

Michaela hums her agreement, taking a sip of the bottle of scotch that they’ve been passing around for the last half hour. “Smart.”

Connor snorts. “Yeah, _smart_ if you wanna end up drinking your own piss to survive.”

“Yeah, well,” Frank chimes in. “At least we’re not at that point yet.”

“Never thought it’d be zombies that took us out, yo,” Asher declares. “Always thought it would be… an asteroid collision. Or the Sun turning into a giant fireball and – _kapooya_! Barbequing us all.”

“Yeah?” Laurel laughs, and takes a deep swig. “I was sure it was gonna be global warming.”

Frank glances sideways at her. “Global warming? C’mon, that’s no fun. I thought it’d be nukes. Go out with a bang, at least.”

“Well, this is the way the world ends,” Connor recites, raising the bottle. “Not with a bang-”

“But a whimper,” Laurel finishes with him, and grins ruefully.

They’re silent for a moment, the gravity of the words settling over them. It’s true; this is how the human race will go extinct, dying off one by one until there’s not a single solitary soul left. Nothing spectacular. No pomp and circumstance; just quiet, slow, inevitable death. If Laurel wasn’t tipsy right now, the thought would probably make her really damn depressed.

“There must be someone, somewhere,” Michaela pipes up, “who knows something. Who has a cure. D.C. New York. Other countries. It can’t be like this everywhere.”

“Maybe not,” Bonnie sighs. “Maybe there’s hope out there, somewhere in the world. Not for us, but for… others.”

Annalise takes a sip, looking thoroughly unconvinced. “I’ve always admired your optimism.”

“Well, we didn’t make it through all this just to give up and lay down now,” Bonnie tries to rally them, though her attempts are half-hearted. “We survived our horrible childhoods, and all the murder and death before. If we’re anything, we’re resilient.”

Asher shrugs, not looking reassured. “How much longer you think we got ‘til we croak, huh? Couple months? Year?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Laurel says. “All we can do now is survive. Try not to get become a walker’s lunch.”

Frank raises the bottle, giving her a wink. “I’ll drink to that.”

So they do, passing the bottle until they’ve drained every last drop.

Every night could be their last. They might as well make the most of it. 

 

\--

 

She and Frank make love for the first time since everything started one rainy July night – or at least Laurel thinks it’s July; she doesn’t keep track of time anymore.

It starts with slow, sweet, tentative kisses as the storm rages around them, and builds into desire that makes her whole body hum, pound, throb with one singular beat. It’s been forever since she’s really thought about sex – and frankly, in between killing walkers, scavenging for food, and trying to survive in general, she hasn’t had time – but the instincts come rushing back in seconds, heat pooling between her legs. Everything about Frank – his muscles, even firmer than she remembers; his smell, musky and earthy; the scratch of his beard, which even now he keeps short and tame – hits her, that pent-up pressure between her legs desperately seeking relief; a dam about to burst. She’s coiled so tight she thinks she just might explode at any second, and their kisses grow heated, hands roaming further and further south.

Frank tugs her shirt up and off, then pulls her into his lap, tucking a strand of greasy hair behind her ear. At first she’s afraid that he’s disgusted by the way she looks; hunger has become almost a constant companion to her, and her ribs are jutting out where they didn’t used to before, her breasts smaller, her skin covered in a layer of dirt and grime. But when she sees the look on his eyes, loving, so full of warmth and adoration, she knows he doesn’t care about any of that; that all he sees is _her_.

“You sure ‘bout this?” he asks, uncertain, and Laurel nods.

She’s not sure of a lot of things these days – hell, she’s not sure of _anything_ , but she’s sure of this.

“Yeah,” she breathes, cupping his cheek and biting her lip. “I’m sure.”

They make their way out of their clothes slowly, lazily, kissing all the while. Frank’s rough, calloused hands roam her body, molding and sculpting it like clay, palming her breasts, then venturing lower to toy with her clit. But there’s no teasing, no prolonging their foreplay, no making her beg like he used to. This is sweet. Real, and his touch is so tender she could cry – because she’s missed this more than she ever could’ve imagined. Missed _him_. She’d been like half a person without him, living but not really _living_ ; she knows that, now.

Laurel whimpers urgently. They have to keep quiet so the others won’t hear them, which is one hell of a challenge considering how loud they used to get, but Laurel can make do, can send Frank silent signals and understand him perfectly well without a word. Just like she’d known he would, he reads her message loud and clear, hard and ready for her as he is, and tugs her forward into his lap once more. He’s seated cross-legged on their sleeping bag, supporting her easily, and urges her to place her legs on either side of him, her nipples brushing his chest and making her squirm.

“Do it,” she pants impatiently, biting her tongue to keep from moaning. “Do it, doit, come _on_ -”

Suddenly, Frank pulls back, then reaches behind him for something. When she sees what he’s holding, Laurel almost laughs aloud.

“Condoms? Really?”

He shrugs, grinning cheekily. “Found ‘em on our last supply run to that convenience store up the road. Figured they might come in handy one day.”

Laurel scoffs. Of course he would think to stop for condoms in the middle of the zombie apocalypse.

“Well,” she teases, leaning forward to press her sweaty forehead to his, “you were very hopeful.”

“You know it. Hope’s all I got to keep me goin’,” Frank chuckles, then grows serious. “But we need ‘em.”

Laurel nods, a bit grimly. Maybe a bit recklessly, they’d rarely used condoms before; she’d always been on the pill, but they can’t afford that recklessness anymore. It’s not like birth control is readily available anymore, and no way in hell would she ever risk bringing a child into this nightmarish world they live in.

Laurel pushes the thought away and reaches for one of the foil packages, tearing it open and reaching down to roll the condom onto him. He grunts at the feeling of her hands gripping him, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, and once she has it secured she takes his cock in hand, positions it between her folds, and sinks down in one swift movement, until he’s buried inside her as deep as he can go – and God help her, she’s so far gone that she nearly comes from that initial fullness and delicious stretch alone. Her eyes fall shut, head tilting back, leaving her throat exposed to his lips; a situation he quickly takes advantage of. He bites and sucks at the tender flesh there as she recovers and starts to move her hips, working herself back and forth slowly over him.

It’s intimate, making love like this, facing each other with nowhere to look but in the other’s eyes. More intimate than anything else, almost; Frank watches her ride him with a look of fascination, and every so often their eyes meet, and his are filled with so much tenderness and something almost like disbelief, like he isn’t sure this is real, that she’s here, that she wants him again. She thinks she can even see tears glistening faintly in his eyes, though it may be just a trick of the light as the storm rages outside.

Laurel’s close. Her pleasure is building to a crescendo along with the howling of the storm, and she can feel herself clenching, trembling around him. She kisses him to muffle her cries, then moves her lips down to his chin, then his cheek, then up to his forehead, kissing every inch of his face.

“I missed you. I… I missed you so much,” she breathes, her lips peppering kisses between his eyes, his nose. “I love you.”

They lay in each other’s arms, after. Frank pulls out of her, ties off the condom, and tosses it away, resting his head on her breasts and curling up against her, the position almost childlike. She rakes a hand through his hair idly as they lay there, treasuring this moment of stillness; this eye of the storm, however brief it may be. It’s their refuge, like there’s no world beyond their tiny tent, and the two of them, and for all Laurel knows, in a month’s time, or a year, they may very well end up being the last two people on earth.

She smiles at the thought. That doesn’t sound so bad, really.

“I missed you,” Laurel murmurs again, peering down at Frank. He looks up, and their eyes meet, and her smile widens, eyes droopy with sleep. “I love you.”

There’s silence, for a moment. Then, Frank speaks up.

“Say that again, will you?”

His voice is soft, scared, like he doesn’t quite believe what he’s heard. He doesn’t want her to repeat it to puff up his ego, though maybe the Frank before would have; no, she knows he’s asking because he really doesn’t believe her, because he wants – _needs_ – affirmation that it’s true, and so she presses a kiss to the top of his head, wrapping an arm around him.

“I missed you,” Laurel repeats, holding him close. “I love you.”

She can tell he believes it, this time. Or he’s starting to, at least.

 

\--

 

Bonnie gets bitten not more than a month later.

The walker – just one, skinny, snarling and particularly vicious – wanders in at the night, while most of the group is gathered around the campfire. Somehow they miss the sound of the rattling cans on the rudimentary fences they’d constructed around the perimeter – or maybe the walker dodges them entirely. But however it gets in, Bonnie happens to be unlucky enough to be in the line of fire, as she steps out of her tent and unsuspectingly into its path.

The sound of screaming at the edge of camp makes them freeze in the midst of their happy chatter.

Everyone who has a gun grabs it, including Laurel. Those who don’t make do with shovels or axes, as they dart in the direction of the cry. They find Bonnie a few feet away from her tent, kicking at the thing desperately, a patch of blood blooming like a gruesome flower beneath her shirt. Within seconds Nate has put a bullet in its brain, and it falls to the ground with a hollow _thump_. Frank kicks it away with a furious growl and bends down to look at her immediately, eyes wide and flying immediately to the blood seeping through her shirt.

“Hey,” he manages to ask. “You okay?”

Bonnie shakes her head, looking pale and terrified. “No, it… I-it got me, Frank.”

Laurel’s heart jumps into her throat as slowly, very slowly, Bonnie unbuttons her blouse with shaking hands and lets it part down the middle, exposing the bite on her lower abdomen. The walker’s teeth hadn’t sunk in very far, but the wound is hideous even so, gushing blood, staining Frank’s hands.

“Who was supposed to be on watch?” Nate bellows, and, meekly, Connor steps forward, raising his hand.

“I, uh… I missed it, somehow. I don’t know – I _was_ watching, I-I didn’t hear anything-”

Bonnie looks to Frank, wide-eyed. “I’m gonna die, aren’t I?”

“No,” he hisses, so harshly it makes her flinch. “Nobody’s dyin’, you hear me? Now c’mon. We’ll clean it. We got alcohol. Antibiotics. It’ll all be okay, Bon. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you. I promise.”

But the reassurances fall on deaf ears; Bonnie doesn’t look like she believes him for a moment, even as they help her into a nearby tent, lay her down, wash out the wound, and dose her with the strongest antibiotic they have. They’ve talked to other survivors, now and then, on the road. They’ve all heard about what happens when a walker bites you.

First, everything seems fine. A latency period, during which you start to think you’ve beaten it, that you’re fine, maybe immune somehow. Then the fever develops: hallucinations, delirium, dizziness. Chills. Vomiting. You start to ache all over; an agonizing, shooting ache painkillers won’t do shit for. The wound festers. The infection spreads, until your body starts to shut down, organs failing one by one like dominos until finally, you’re granted the sweet relief that is death.

A bite is a death sentence. Laurel knows that.

They _all_ know that, but no one mentions it around Bonnie – not even after a day passes and the fever hits, the bite turning a sickening yellow-green color, oozing, the skin surrounding it bright red with infection. Annalise is by her side almost constantly, dabbing her forehead with a cool cloth, cleaning the wound relentlessly, like somehow that will do some kind of good. She’s as feral as a mother bear protecting her cub, snarling at anyone who tries to pull her away, get her to eat, rest, anything. Frank stays with her too, and surprisingly enough Annalise lets him, sending him for supplies whenever she needs them and keeping Asher out of the tent while he wanders around aimlessly, eyes swollen from crying. They look determined, all three of them. Laurel’s never seen such determination in her life. 

But Bonnie only continues to deteriorate, and by the third day, she’s barely lucid.

“We need to head out. Now,” Frank announces to the group as he gathers them in the middle of camp that morning. He’s pale, sweaty, eyes wild and bloodshot from a lack of sleep. It terrifies Laurel to see him like this, on the brink of madness. “We can go to New York City. Or D.C. Maybe… somebody there’s got a cure. Maybe they can help her.”

“Frank…” Laurel pipes up, sighing, trying to phrase her words lightly and reason with him. “And what if we get there and there’s no cure? No nothing? We’ll be goners, if the city’s overrun like Philly was.”

He sucks in a shaky breath, clenching his jaw. “We… Look, we gotta try. She’s only gettin’ worse. I don’t know how much longer she’s got, and…”

He drifts off, choked up, and runs a frantic hand through his hair. This time, it’s Michaela who speaks.

“But she can’t travel, not when she’s like this-”

“Who the hell do you think you are that you get to decide that, huh?” Frank snaps, and Michaela blinks. He exhales sharply. “It’s the only way. Annalise says we go, so we go. We have to.”

“Michaela’s right, Frank,” Nate urges, patient as ever. “We can’t move her. Maybe all we can do now is make her comfortable.”

“No,” Frank growls, half-hysterical. “I’m not acceptin’ that. There must… For fuck’s sake, we gotta _do_ something!”

Laurel goes to him, pressing her hands against his chest, holding him back, trying to soothe him, “Frank, calm down-”

But he just shrugs her off roughly, takes another look around at their faces like he’s looking at a group of traitors, then ducks back into Bonnie’s tent. Laurel and the others resume their chores after that, and she’s in the middle of washing one of Asher’s shirts a few minutes later when she notices Annalise herself emerge from the tent. She looks just as awful as Frank, maybe even worse, and immediately she flings herself at Nate, screaming, cursing at him, yelling about Bonnie, how they have to go, _we have to go_ , _I can’t lose her, Nate, I can’t_ , before finally breaking down into sobs and collapsing in his arms.

Something changes, in Annalise’s demeanor. It takes on an air of hopelessness, after that day.

Laurel doesn’t go in Bonnie’s tent often, only to check on Frank and make sure he’s eating – which he isn’t, not really. Neither is Annalise, and Asher is a similarly nervous wreck, pacing constantly, unable to focus on even the most basic chores. The whole tent – hell, the whole _camp_ – has taken on a grim, grey atmosphere of death. Bonnie hallucinates Lila. Rebecca. Sam. Laurel isn’t sure she even knows where she is, or what’s happening to her – and that’s probably for the best.

On the fifth day, however, she’s lucid enough to ask to go outside.

Laurel is gathering wood for the fire when she catches a glimpse of Bonnie, barely able to walk, with her arms slung around Annalise and Frank’s shoulders. She’s as pale as a ghost, soaked in sweat and shivering, looking as small as a child, and Laurel raises her chin to keep from crying at the sight as they set her down, propping her up against a willow tree near the middle of camp. She keeps her distance, as Frank and Annalise and Asher sit with her, but she’s close enough to hear what they’re saying, the low, comforting words they can barely choke out through their tears.

“It’s so… beautiful,” Bonnie mutters, eyes locked on the sky, cornflower blue and filled with clouds as white as cotton. “Everything is so, so beautiful.”

“I, uh, got you some daises,” Asher mentions, holding out a little bouquet of them to her. She’s too weak to raise her hand to take them, so he helps her, closing her fist around the stems. “I remember how you said you always liked ‘em.”

Bonnie smiles at him, ever so slightly. “I never… wanted us to end, like we did. I’m sorry, Asher…”

“We still…” Asher drifts off, as broken as she’s ever seen him. “We still have time. Hell, it’s the end of the world; we got all the time we could ever… e-ever need. It’s not over, Bon.”

Bonnie’s grin is rueful, resigned. When she speaks, there’s finality in her voice – acceptance, almost. “Yes it is.”

“Don’t say that,” Annalise insists, reaching up to brush the sweaty strands of blonde hair away from her eyes. “Don’t you _dare_ say that, Bonnie. Don’t you give up on me now. We’ve made it this far and _you’re not giving up_.”

“Don’t yell at me, please,” Bonnie tells her, her voice small. Guilt floods Annalise’s eyes immediately, and she withdraws slightly, all hunched in on herself in a way Laurel has never seen before. Bonnie’s eyes flutter shut, her breathing labored. “I’m so tired.”

Laurel watches Frank raise his eyes briefly to the sky in an effort to keep his own tears from falling, then turn his attention to her, placing a light blanket over her legs.

“Then go to sleep, okay? And we’ll all…” His voice catches. “We’re all gonna be here when you wake up. Promise.”

Bonnie hums, a loopy, dreamy smile playing at her lips. She looks happier than any of them have looked in a long time, Laurel thinks, running towards death gleefully with arms outstretched.

She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t considered ending it before, taking her own life. She knows all of them have, even if they won’t admit it; it’d be easier, so much easier, just to make everything _stop_. She hadn’t wanted to die, though. Not really. She’d just wanted to escape.

The thought of Frank had always stopped her. It still does, whenever the thoughts worm their way into her head.

But Bonnie looks happy. Accepting of the end. Grateful to be free. Laurel cries for her. Laurel _envies_ her.

Everyone goes silent suddenly, in the little group beneath the tree. Cautiously, Laurel creeps towards them, hanging back and watching as Bonnie’s breathing speeds up, then bit by bit slows down, her breaths growing further and further apart, and slower and shallower, until finally…

Her chest stops rising.

Frank is the one who nudges her, though he knows; she can see it in his eyes. He knows she’s gone, but he nudges her nonetheless so Annalise doesn’t have to, croaking her name.

“Bon?”

The sound Annalise makes when she doesn’t stir is barely human; a loud, guttural, agonizing wail, like a banshee, echoing off the hillsides and down into the forest. She grabs Bonnie and pulls her into her arms, sobbing into her hair and smacking away Frank when he tries to reach out to her. He nods weakly, rising to stand like his body is the heaviest weight in the world, and backs away, cheeks soaked with tears, shoulders slumped. He pulls Asher away when the other man tries to touch her, telling him to _let her be, she needs to be with her right now, she needs time alone,_ and choking on the words as they leave his mouth.

Laurel’s eyes meet his, across the way. By now she’s crying too, vision blurry, but she knows Frank has it worse, a hell of a lot worse, and so she goes to him at once, drawing his head down to her shoulder and holding him as he finally breaks, sobbing like a child.

“It’s okay,” she sputters dumbly, not knowing what else to say, rubbing his back and kissing his cheek. “It’s okay, you’re okay…”

But they’re not. They’re not okay.

After this, Laurel doesn’t know how they ever can be even remotely close to _okay_ again.


	5. Act V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have arrived at the end!! This fic ended up being fairly short, but I feel like it wrapped up nicely, and I'm grateful to everyone for reading/commenting/dropping kudos :) Enjoy lovelies.

Annalise won’t budge from the body.

In a normal world, they would give her time, as much as she needs. Let her grieve. But in this world it presents problems; even Frank, hysterical as he is, knows they need to take care of Bonnie before she turns. Every time someone broaches the subject, however, Annalise screams at them, curses, swears, unleashing every ounce of fury inside her until they finally relent and leave her be.

So Frank, knowing what he has to do – that he has to be ready – resolves to take up vigil beside Annalise. Amazingly enough, Annalise lets him.

They kneel there, side by side, as the hours pass. Sometimes Laurel sees them holding each other, clinging to one another so desperately that she can’t imagine how they’d ever be parted. Even Nate, who would normally be the one to comfort Annalise, has the good sense to keep his distance, leave them be as a family – and they were, Laurel knows, even if not by blood. They were a family, however tiny and twisted and fucked-up a family it may have been.

The sun sets, then rises. The hours tick by. Everyone knows that it won’t be long, now. Michaela and Connor are getting nervous, saying they should _just do it_ already, make sure no one else gets bitten or hurt. Laurel shushes them. Laurel watches. Waits, like a sentinel, at the edge of camp.

She’s watching when it happens.

A barely-perceptible twitch passes through Bonnie’s body, like a shiver, as she comes alive, her skin pallid, ghost-white. Her fingers move first, feeling around on the grass beneath them. Then her feet. Laurel hears Annalise breathe her name, with something like a note of hope in it, like somehow, against all odds, she believes that she’ll open her eyes and come back – not just some living corpse, but as her, the _real_ her. Frank says it, too, with that same hope flickering in his eyes: _Bon_?

But Bonnie’s once-warm brown eyes are glazed over and dull when they open. She moves about on the ground for a second, getting her bearings. Then her jaw starts to snap reflexively, open and closed, and those same godawful moans pour from her lips, low and ravenous. She sits up, reaching out toward Annalise and Frank – and there are tears in Frank’s eyes, so much hurt that she doesn’t know how he can breathe, but there’s also reason. He knows what he has to do.

Knows this isn’t Bonnie. Not really. Not anymore.

One shot from his pistol, pressed up against her forehead, is all it takes to end it.

He has her blood splattered on his face and clothes when he draws back, a sickening contrast to the paleness of his skin. Numbly, Frank gets to his feet and heads for their tent, eyes hollow, not even sparing Laurel a glance as he walks past her. She frowns, and follows, stepping inside and finding him seated on the old overturned crate they’ve taken to using for a makeshift chair. He has a damp rag in his hands, ostensibly to wipe Bonnie’s blood off his face, but he’s not moving a muscle. He’s just staring, as if someone has scooped the soul out of him and let an empty shell behind; a shattered wreck of a man, breathing heavily and holding back his tears with every scrap of willpower he has left in him.

“Frank,” she says his name softly, and he jumps, not having noticed her enter.

Frank doesn’t say anything. No assurances, no lies that he’s fine; he made a promise never to lie to her again, and he wouldn’t, not now. He just looks at her, like he’s trying again and again to comprehend what he’s done but his brain is misfiring, and he can’t, no matter how hard he tries.

“Here,” Laurel tells him, walking over, kneeling before him, rolling up her sleeves, and taking the cloth out of his hands. “Let me.”

Slowly, without a word, Laurel wipes his face, his cheeks, forehead, chin. The rag comes away covered in blood and dirt when she’s done, and Frank clenches his jaw, so obviously biting back tears that Laurel has no idea how he thinks she won’t see. It makes her eyes well up too, before she can help it.

“Frank-” she starts, but he cuts her off.

“I had to. Do that to her,” he mutters, voice strained and thick with sorrow. “Wasn’t her. I had to, I-”

“I know that,” Laurel soothes, lacing her fingers through his and resting their joined hands on his knee. “Everyone knows that.”

“I hate it,” he confesses suddenly, with malice in his tone. It catches her off guard. “Killing. I fucking hate it. Everyone thinks… ‘cause of Lila, that I’m some kinda monster, some kinda… _hitman_ they can send to do their dirty work. That I don’t care. That I like it. I promised myself after Lila, never again.” He pauses, swallowing heavily, his eyes searching hers for something. Finally, he lets out a shaky breath. “And now I do it all the damn time.”

He’s not built for this – she knows it for sure, right then. He’s not made for this savage world despite any outward appearance otherwise, and it’s wearing on him, she can see it in his eyes. The killing of those things, even dead as they are. Losing Bonnie, and seeing Bonnie become one of them. It’s all too much, a nightmare playing on an endless loop that they can never seem to escape.

“No one blames you for it-”

“It isn’t about people blamin’ me for it,” he shoots back. “I just – I hate it. And doin’ it to Bon – _God_ , Bon.”

Laurel considers, for a second, all the lies she could feed him. Lies about heaven. Lies about how Bonnie’s in a better place, now. Lies about how they can work through his, move on as a group, survive, about how Bonnie will always be with them. None of them sound even half-convincing in her head, and so she settles on one old, tired one instead.

“It’s okay. It’s all right. She…” Her voice breaks, and the lie, weak, pathetic thing as it is, dies on her tongue.

“She was the closest thing to a sister I ever had,” Frank says, lowering his eyes. “Didn’t give up on me, hate me, even after Lila. She was so strong. Stronger ‘n me. If you knew what she went through, her childhood…” He drifts off, shaking his head. “But she didn’t let it break her. Never gave up. Not even when the fucking… dead started roaming the earth, she never lost hope. And I don’t know… I don’t know how we’re supposed to just keep goin’ – she had so much light in her, Laurel, she didn’t deserve to die like that. She was my…”

Frank trails off again, choked up. Laurel strokes the area between his thumb and forefinger tenderly, listening without a word.

“She was my family,” he tells her, finally, and the words break her heart. “My folks are long gone; no way my dad got out of the city in that wheelchair. She and Annalise were all I had left.”

“She was… she was family to everyone. That’s what we are now. Family.”

It’s a stupid reassurance. As soon as she says it, Laurel becomes acutely aware of the fact that she has no idea how to comfort him after this, or if she even _can_ – but suddenly, something switches on in Frank’s eyes. Fierce determination. He pulls her closer, sucking in a breath to steady his voice.

“You gotta be careful – Laurel, you gotta _promise_ me you’ll be more careful. If something ever happened to you-”

“If something ever happens to me,” she finishes for him sharply, wiping at her cheeks and sitting up, “you’re gonna go on.”

She’s never seen Frank so terrified. He shakes his head, starts to open his mouth. “I-”

“Listen to me,” she cuts him off, and his mouth falls shut. “If something ever happens to me, you’re _not_ allowed to kill yourself, do you understand? Annalise needs you, now more than ever. A-and the others? Connor, Oliver, Michaela, Asher, Wes? They can’t fend for themselves out here and you know it.”

“They got Nate, they don’t need me-”

“They _do_ ,” Laurel asserts, unwavering. “And so does Annalise. So… if you ever lose me, Frank, for any reason, you have to promise you’ll keep living for the others. That’s what I want. That’s what Bonnie would’ve wanted too.” Frank doesn’t say anything, and so she reaches up, placing her hands on his cheeks and forcing him to look her in the eyes. “ _Promise_ me.”

A moment passes. Then, he nods, deflating slightly. “Okay.”

Laurel lets out a breath, drawing back. She wipes at her cheeks again, and when her hand comes back covered in grime, it occurs to her just how filthy she is, how filthy they _both_ are – and she knows for a fact walking around with Bonnie’s dried blood all over him is only going to amplify Frank’s grief tenfold. So she makes herself stand, dusting off the knees of her jeans, and holds out her hand for his to take, summoning up a smile for him.

“Come on,” she mutters. “We’re both disgusting. We need baths.”

Frank stands, but catches her waist before she can take a step away, turning her back towards him.

“Hey. You gotta make me a promise too, then.”

“What?”

“Be careful. Stay with me, always. Please,” he rasps, pressing his forehead against hers. “I can’t lose you. I love you so much, sometimes… it makes me sick, just thinkin’ about it-”

“I’ll be careful,” she affirms softly, sniffling. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m pretty, uh, pretty handy with a pistol.”

Frank doesn’t laugh, or even smile; he’s serious, and so scared that he looks like a little boy. “Promise me, though. After Bon…”

She nods, bowing her head and letting him press a kiss to her forehead. “All right. I promise too.”

Laurel draws back, then takes his hand – and he’s pale, hasn’t slept in days, with red eyes surrounded by hideous broken capillaries, and he looks terrible, but relief flashes behind his eyes, just then. Love. More affection than Laurel had known was possible, and so Frank takes her hand and follows her down to the creek, squeezing it all the way like she’ll disappear if he lets go.

They bury Bonnie beneath the willow tree, with the bouquet Asher had given her in her hands.

Frank stays at the grave long after the others have departed after their little service, even after Annalise is gone. Laurel comes upon him still kneeling in the dirt hours later, planted as firmly as a root, staring at the freshly-dug grave, and places a hand on his shoulder, holding out her other to help him to his feet.

Frank pauses. Seems to consider something, for a moment – but then he takes it, rises to stand, and lets her lead him back to their tent, back home. They may not have homes in the sense of houses any more in this world, Laurel knows. But she has a home, and so does he. _He’s_ her home. She’s his.

She supposes homes have to come in the form of people, now. And he’s hers. He’ll always be hers.

She knows that as sure as she’s breathing. It’s all she knows for sure, anymore.

 

\--

 

They become wanderers, what’s left of them. They always have been, Laurel guesses, but they’re more directionless after Bonnie’s death, like a compass spinning in a circle without end.

Never staying in one camp too long, never settling down, never allowing themselves to get comfortable. Transients. Drifters. They’re looking for something – Laurel never knows exactly what. Safe haven maybe, in some remote little corner of the world. Some place they can call their own, where they can build a life again; a life that’s more than just surviving, scavenging, living like beasts. They still have their humanity, or whatever tattered remains of it exist. They can start over. That’s the only end goal she can discern for them, really: starting over.

They lose three others, along the way.

Michaela, to a horde that attack camp in the middle of the night. Laurel can still hear her screams as they’d feasted on her, even now. She dreams about them, sometimes; hearing them, finding her body, or what’d been left of it. Dreams about the girl she had known with the fire in her eyes that’d never gone out, with the will of a fighter and the stubbornness of a bull; and a survivor, _always_ a survivor.

Asher they lose to a walker bite while scavenging parked cars on the highway. He doesn’t let himself languish, like Bonnie had. He jokes about wanting to go out on his own terms, but they all know he’s not kidding; Frank gives him a gun with one bullet in it, telling him to wait to use it until they’re far enough away before he pulls the trigger, to avoid all but ringing a dinner bell for the other walkers.

Laurel hears the gunshot pierce the air, not long after they leave him.

And Wes… Wes they find with a bullet in his brain and a pistol in his hand one morning, after a gunshot rouses the entire camp. He hadn’t left a note. He hadn’t said any goodbyes. Laurel hadn’t even noticed he was withdrawing, back and back further into himself, this new, violent world too much for him to handle. He’d always been quiet; she should’ve noticed him being quiet _er_. She cries until she’s sick, holds his body, curses at him for being so selfish, so _stupid_. She blames herself. That never leaves her; the guilt over Wes, like ever-present nausea in the pit of her stomach.

_He_ never leaves her. None of them do. Sometimes, when she’s with the group sitting around the campfire, she swears she can still hear the distant echoes of Michaela’s laugh, or Asher’s douchey jokes, or Wes’s lowly-spoken, muttered comments.

They wander, farther and farther. Annalise. Nate. Connor. Oliver. Her and Frank. The six of them, clinging to each other. Frank has a map, but they have no clue where they are on it. Cities aren’t cities anymore; places have no names. They keep going. They drive, when they can find cars with gas. They search, aimlessly.

Then, months later, they find it.

A tiny farm town with no more than a dozen ramshackle homes somewhere in Pennsylvania, maybe unincorporated, nothing more than a miniscule dot on a map – or perhaps not even that. They sweep through it at first with no intentions of staying, but upon finding it deserted of both walkers and people, they reconsider. Clearly no one had been living here when everything began; the place looks like it became a ghost town long ago, situated in a protected little valley with overgrown crop fields, mostly cut off from the outside world.

There is one man; an old farmer named Timothy, in his eighties at least, but plucky as ever. He pulls a shotgun on their group the first time he sees them, and holds it there until Frank holds up his hands and gives up their weapons. In time, however, they get to talking. Ask to stay. Laurel doesn’t let herself get too hopeful; she knows as well the others do that it’s almost certain this will just be another dead-end.

But the old man says yes – and then, just like that, they have a home.

They take three houses in town; Nate and Annalise in one, Connor and Oliver in another, and Frank and her in the last, a rundown two-story farmhouse half-reclaimed by nature and infested with rats, roaches, and pretty much every kind of varmint possible, but it’s four walls and a roof over her head, so Laurel doesn’t complain. She has a bed, again. A _real_ bed. Frank helps her clean the place and board up the windows. They even manage to salvage a few pieces of furniture from other deserted homes in town.

They make it a home, little by little. Dirty, dusty, with a leaking roof and creaky floorboards, but home all the same.

They learn to farm from the old man – who, shockingly enough, still keeps a few chickens and cattle. Frank and Nate and Connor and Oliver help out in his fields. Laurel and Annalise do what they can otherwise, spending more time together than Laurel had ever imagined they would. It’s strange, to see Annalise Keating like this: stripped of her makeup and wig and all the armor that had made her who she was back in civilization. She seems so much simpler now than she ever had before; not a goddess to be feared, revered, but… just a woman.

“You know,” she remarks early one evening, as she takes a seat on a rocking chair on Annalise’s porch next to her, sipping a glass of lemonade, “if you’d told me a year ago I’d be riding out the apocalypse with the Great Annalise Keating in some… tiny cow town in the middle of nowhere, I would’ve-”

“Called me crazy and had me remanded to an insane asylum?” the other woman snorts, and pours herself a glass from the pitcher. “I wouldn’t have blamed you. But that office, everyone, all the skeletons in our closets… Sam, Rebecca, Lila, Sinclair. They’re gone. Maybe this is our chance to start over.”

“Yeah, well,” Laurel quips. “I think I could’ve stood to start over _minus_ hordes of the undead trying to eat me for dinner.”

They’re still close enough to the highway to make supply runs, whenever they need anything. And they do. And over and over, they come back alive, in one piece. And if there’s a God, and if she believed, Laurel Castillo has two things she’d say to him.

One? She’d tell him he has a twisted fucking sense of humor, promising to raise the dead again and then _literally_ raising the dead again.

And two? She’d thank him. Thank him for Frank. Thank him for this place. For getting them both out alive.

She’d thank him, if he existed. She knows he doesn’t. But she’s alive, God or no God.

She’s alive, God or no God, and she’s still standing.

Frank comes in from the fields one afternoon, a year since everything began, shirtless in only a pair of jeans and dripping with sweat in the high heat. She’s in the kitchen of all places when he does, leaning against the counter and sipping a glass of water from the well in town. The Laurel Castillo of a year ago would’ve cringed, would’ve slapped her silly for becoming some little housewife, barefoot in a damn kitchen. Part of the Laurel Castillo of today still wants to – but the Laurel Castillo of today has also nearly died one too many times to be very picky about her current circumstances.

“Wow,” she remarks, as Frank kisses her and lifts her up onto the counter. “I never thought I’d live to see the day I was a farmer’s wife.”

“You? Never thought _I’d_ live to see the day you willingly set foot in a kitchen.”

She rolls her eyes, making to kick him in the groin but stopping at the last second. “You know, just because it’s the end of the world, _doesn’t_ give you a free pass to be a misogynistic ass.”

“Well, this misogynistic ass is the only good lay for probably a hundred miles around. So looks like you’re stuck with me.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she teases, her lips ghosting across his. “Nate’s probably _really_ good in bed, and he’s right outside.”

Frank smirks, but it leaves his lips quickly, and he grows serious, cupping her cheek, urging her to look at him.

“Don’t leave me, okay? Ever.”

He still says things like this sometimes, even though they’re the safest they can ever be right here. Things about losing her. Things about not being able to live without her. Losing Bonnie had changed him in so many ways, broken his confidence, made him needier and downright terrified of losing anyone else – especially her. Sometimes in the night she’ll wake to find him stirring from a nightmare, of her being taken, killed in front of him. Most nights he squeezes her subconsciously in his sleep, as if checking to make sure she’s still there.

“I won’t,” she answers patiently, like she always does, and runs a hand through his hair. “And I mean, even if I did, where would I go? You said it yourself; you’re the only good lay for probably a hundred miles.”

“Mmm,” he hums against her lips, pulling her towards him suddenly, eyes darkened with lust, his intentions clear. “Good thing I’m right here then.”

“Don’t you have to be back in the fields in ten minutes, Farmer Fishtown?” she asks, pretending to be scandalized.

He just winks at her, and scoops her up-bridal style. “Not like I’m punchin’ a timeclock these days.”

Laurel laughs, full-chested, free, and deep. She throws her head back, strands of her dark hair catching the sunlight filtering in through the boarded-up window, and nestles herself against his chest, letting him carry her up the stairs and over the threshold of their bedroom, like a newlywed couple. And Laurel laughs, again. Laughs until her belly aches, as he lays her down and kisses her bare stomach, his beard tickling her skin. Laughs because she’s happy – really, truly, honest to God happy – when before she’d been so sure she’d never be happy again. The world is still, terrible, maybe; violent and merciless, a cesspool of death and depravity, and they’ve lost too many people to count. But, she decides as Frank’s lips meet her own, at least there’s some good that came out of all of this, in some twisted, messed-up sort of way; the end of the world morphing into the beginning of something else. The beginning of them. A fresh start. A real chance.

Laurel throws her head back, laughs again at the thought.

Well, she figures. There’s nothing like the end of the world to bring two people back together again.


End file.
